Gender, Communal Boundaries and Leisure Activities: A New Approach?

This historiographical talk connects scholarship on masculinity and leisure in the modern Middle East with work on the fluidity of communal boundaries during the late Ottoman Empire. Focusing on the creation of a shared sports culture in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Istanbul, the talk explores the ways in which Muslim, Christian and Jewish young men from an expanding middle class cultivated shared and exclusive ties as they exercised, joined sports clubs and explored the city.